The lingering of an absurd imperial reflex

[laststeamtrain]

The lingering of an absurd imperial reflex

The west's moral didacticism now grates more than the realpolitik of China and the east

Pankaj Mishra
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 March 2010

There were chuckles and sniggers in Qatar last month when Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, warned that a military dictatorship was imminent in Iran. Threatening America's most intransigent adversary, Clinton seems to have been oblivious to her audience: educated Arabs in the Middle East where America's military presence has long propped up several dictators, including such stalwart allies in rendition and torture as Hosni Mubarak.

Of course, by her own standards, Clinton was being remarkably nuanced and sober: during the presidential campaign in 2008 she promised to "obliterate" Iran. An over-eager cheerleader of the Bush administration's serial bellicosity, Clinton exemplifies Barack Obama's essential continuity with previous US foreign policymakers – despite the president's many emollient words to the contrary. Clinton has also "warned" China with an officiousness redolent of the 1990s when her husband, with some encouragement from Tony Blair, tried to sort out the New World Order.

But the illusions of western power that proliferated in the 90s now lie shattered. No longer as introverted as before, China contemptuously dismissed Clinton's warnings. The Iranians did not fail to highlight American skulduggery in their oil-rich neighbourhood. But then Clinton is not alone among Anglo-American leaders in failing to recognise how absurdly hollow their quasi-imperial rhetoric sounds in the post-9/11 political climate.

<snip>

The Chinese, Indians, Iranians and other emerging powers too have an idea of what they owe to themselves: the richness of the world that the west first claimed for itself. But while getting what they want, they won't claim the sanction of a superior morality and civilisation. Indeed, the long and appalling history of European hypocrisy in Asia and Africa may be why Beijing dispenses altogether with talk of Chinese values as its strikes deals with nasty regimes in Africa, and why even democratic India keeps mum about the advantages of regular elections as it tries to offset Chinese influence over Burma's military despots. Unredeemed by any higher idea, this new scramble for resources is of course an ignoble spectacle: after all, as a French sage put it, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. Certainly, the new ruthless realpolitik of the east does not pretend to realise a universal good; but it may prove to be much less obfuscating, and maybe even less aggravating, than the moral didacticism of the west.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/04/colonialist-foreign-policy-developing-economies

[Warpy]

1. The Iranians have been warning about this for months

because Khameini is seen as an economic bungler, hopelessly weakened and not in the best of health and the military, always a tool of the well off, is poised to take over. The truth of this situation is anyone's guess, but it sure took the Dept. of State long enough to twig to all the rumors coming out of that country.

There are other rumors that say there's a struggle behind the scenes already and that power will transfer seamlessly when the old bugger finally kicks off because most of it has changed hands already.

[Igel]

2. I always find this kind of thing amusing.

I mean, "Indeed, the long and appalling history of European hypocrisy in Asia and Africa may be why Beijing dispenses altogether with talk of Chinese values as its strikes deals with nasty regimes in Africa, and why even democratic India keeps mum about the advantages of regular elections as it tries to offset Chinese influence over Burma's military despots. Unredeemed by any higher idea, this new scramble for resources is of course an ignoble spectacle: after all, as a French sage put it, hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. Certainly, the new ruthless realpolitik of the east does not pretend to realise a universal good; but it may prove to be much less obfuscating, and maybe even less aggravating, than the moral didacticism of the west."

It's amusing because on the one hand hypocrisy is bad and it's a charge that can easily be imputed to the West. But it's amusing on the other hand as well, because the sheer brutality of a Hitler could be justified as being refreshingly unhypocritical.

What's overlooked is that one can appear hypocritical while not being hypocritical; it confuses the positing of an ideal that's not attained--and often not much sought after by many--with the imposition of an ideal on others by those who don't actually think the ideal is worthwhile but is, after all, a useful means of control. There's a lot of that kind of obfuscation, often by those who have no ideal apart from power and control. It's a way of making one's self seem somehow more noble in one's ignominy.

Politeness and civility is often the same kind of hypocrisy. The bully has trouble appearing any more righteous than the backbiter especially when there are those who sincerely believe in the virtue of civility, however much the bully may appeal to the example of the backbiter to deny that civility could ever exist. It's one of the themes in many a country's foreign policy; but it's seldom been the only theme in a Western country's foreign policy.